This is based on the IBM Dictionary of computing method to describe disk storage - the simplest.

Now let's go into a little more detail. Bit: A Bit is the smallest unit of data that a computer uses. It can be used to represent two states of information, such as Yes or No. Byte: A Byte is equal to 8 Bits. A Byte can represent 256 states of information, for example, numbers or a combination of numbers and letters. 1 Byte could be e qual to one character. 10 Bytes could be equal to a word. 100 Bytes would equal an average sentence. Kilobyte: A Kilobyte is approximately 1,000 Bytes, actually 1,024 Bytes dependin g on which definition is used. 1 Kilobyte would be equal to this paragraph you a re reading, whereas 100 Kilobytes would equal an entire page. Megabyte: A Megabyte is approximately 1,000 Kilobytes. In the early days of comp uting, a Megabyte was considered to be a large amount of data. These days with a 500 Gigabyte hard drive on a computer being common, a Megabyte doesn't seem lik e much anymore. One of those old 3-1/2 inch floppy disks can hold 1.44 Megabytes or the equivalent of a small book. 100 Megabytes might hold a couple volumes of Encyclopedias. 600 Megabytes is about the amount of data that will fit on a CDROM disk. Gigabyte: A Gigabyte is approximately 1,000 Megabytes. A Gigabyte is still a ver y common term used these days when referring to disk space or drive storage. 1 G igabyte of data is almost twice the amount of data that a CD-ROM can hold. But i t's about one thousand times the capacity of a 3-1/2 floppy disk. 1 Gigabyte cou ld hold the contents of about 10 yards of books on a shelf. 100 Gigabytes could hold the entire library floor of academic journals. Terabyte: A Terabyte is approximately one trillion bytes, or 1,000 Gigabytes. Th ere was a time that I never thought I would see a 1 Terabyte hard drive, now one and two terabyte drives are the normal specs for many new computers. To put it in some perspective, a Terabyte could hold about 3.6 million 300 Kilobyte image s or maybe about 300 hours of good quality video. A Terabyte could hold 1,000 co pies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Ten Terabytes could hold the printed collec tion of the Library of Congress. That's a lot of data. Petabyte: A Petabyte is approximately 1,000 Terabytes or one million Gigabytes. It's hard to visualize what a Petabyte could hold. 1 Petabyte could hold approxi mately 20 million 4-door filing cabinets full of text. It could hold 500 billion pages of standard printed text. It would take about 500 million floppy disks to store the same amount of data. Exabyte: An Exabyte is approximately 1,000 Petabytes. Another way to look at it is that an Exabyte is approximately one quintillion bytes or one billion Gigabyt es. There is not much to compare an Exabyte to. It has been said that 5 Exabytes would be equal to all of the words ever spoken by mankind. Zettabyte: A Zettabyte is approximately 1,000 Exabytes. There is nothing to comp are a Zettabyte to but to say that it would take a whole lot of ones and zeroes to fill it up. Yottabyte: A Yottabyte is approximately 1,000 Zettabytes. It would take approxim ately 11 trillion years to download a Yottabyte file from the Internet using hig h-power broadband. You can compare it to the World Wide Web as the entire Intern et almost takes up about a Yottabyte. Brontobyte: A Brontobyte is (you guessed it) approximately 1,000 Yottabytes. The

only thing there is to say about a Brontobyte is that it is a 1 followed by 27 zeroes! Geopbyte: A Geopbyte is about 1000 Brontobytes! Not sure why this term was creat ed. I'm doubting that anyone alive today will ever see a Geopbyte hard drive. On e way of looking at a geopbyte is 15267 6504600 2283229 4012496 7031205 376 byte s!